For-profit Virginia College plans GSO campus

Virginia College, a for-profit college based in Birmingham, Ala., hopes to open its first N.C. campus in Greensboro by the end of the year, if regulators approve.

The UNC Board of Governors was scheduled to consider the school’s application for licensure at its April 13 meeting. A team of reviewers reporting to the board recommended the license be granted.

According to the licensure report, Virginia College plans to offer 12 associate degrees, ranging from a variety of health care-related fields to criminal justice, network engineering and paralegal studies. The school also plans to offer three bachelor’s degrees in business administration, criminal justice and network management.

Virginia College is owned by Education Corp. of America, which also owns the culinary school Culinard and Golf Academy of America schools.

All of Virginia College’s plans in North Carolina are subject to regulatory approval, said Don Keith, senior vice president of marketing and communications with Virginia College. He said the college has identified a potential location but he declined to reveal it. Keith said a typical Virginia College campus is between 45,000 square feet and 60,000 square feet and employs about 120 people. The school typically invests about $5 million in building renovations and equipment.

Health care a focal point

Keith said Virginia College has opened about four campuses per year in recent years, and typically looks for communities with strong employer demand in health care fields, which is one of the school’s primary specialties.

“Typically we’re looking at a campus of about 1,000 students” for its remote branches, he said. “If we go much bigger than that then we start to feel like we’re not fulfilling our promise of individualized instruction.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are about 8,500 students in total enrolled at Virginia College’s main campus in Birmingham. At that campus, 52 percent of students attend full-time.

NCES data shows an overall graduation rate of 25 percent for full-time, first-time undergraduates on that campus who started in 2004. The data shows that 100 percent of students on that campus received some form of financial aid, including an average of $4,475 in grants and $10,325 in loans.

Virginia College provides its own consumer information by individual program. Taking the bachelor’s program in business administration as an example, the school says the total cost of the education is $72,380 over 47 months, with 88 percent of graduates finishing in that amount of time. The average loan debt for program graduates is $40,442, and the job placement rate for graduates is 89 percent, according to the school.

Accredited nationally, not regionally

Virginia College is accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, a national accrediting body. It does not have an accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the regional body that oversees colleges in North Carolina.

Potential students should be aware of the implications of varying accrediting standards that apply to any school they are considering in the context of their future plans, according to Andrew Magda, a senior analyst with the consulting firm EduVentures in Boston.

Magda said both regional and national accrediting bodies are recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and both are designed to ensure that member schools meet minimum quality requirements.

He said national accrediting bodies tend to place more emphasis on measuring student outcomes, where regional accreditation is more focused on academic quality. Both have value, he said, but some employers and potential transfer schools may prefer or insist on credentials with regional accreditation.

“If your career aspiration is to go on to a master’s degree program at a state school for example, it’s best to have a conversation with that school upfront about taking a nationally accredited program to them to make sure it won’t be a problem,” Magda said.

Another for-profit college, South University, received approval to open a Triad campus last year. South has not yet announced an opening date but it is currently hiring faculty and staff for that campus, according to online job listings. South University did not return calls seeking an update on its timeline.